Oakenfold's Bourne Odyssey

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Exclusive: The DJ, producer and composer discusses his score for the new video game The Bourne Conspiracy.

By Todd Gilchrist

Two weeks ago IGN was invited to Miami to interview Paul Oakenfold at the Winter Music Conference about his score for the upcoming video game The Bourne Conspiracy. Unsurprisingly, Oakenfold more or less confirmed my expectations - namely, that when it comes to musicians, expect the unexpected - as he not only offered plenty of terrific, oddball answers about his new music, but actually turned the tables and interviewed me in the midst of fielding a barrage of questions.

IGN Music: Just to get started, can you talk a little about moving from a narrative medium as a composer to an interactive one?

Paul Oakenfold: Going from DJ to film and film to game, I seem to be moving further and further away from what I do. I mean, my main career now is writing music for films, so I love the challenge of games. They give you a lot more leeway. I'm on my second game - the first game was Bond - so I enjoy it, very much so actually.

IGN: How much did you take from John Powell's scores for the Bourne films and how much did you create yourself?

Oakenfold: Not at all. We didn't have the permission to do that, and I felt that was the film. We felt like the game needed its own sound. This is a lot edgier, and it really speaks for itself in terms of what works for the visuals, because the game is pretty much fighting all of the time.

IGN: What's the key to making music that is distinctive but unobtrusive, since the object of music in a game is not to distract the gamer as he's playing? Do you have to restrain yourself at all to not something together that will take the player out of the action?

Oakenfold: No, you enhance what's there. If the characters are hanging out, you don't want to have machine guns going off, so you just mirror the music with what you're seeing. That's the secret.

IGN: Do you have to be conscious of the difference between a game and a movie? Such as in a movie, are you aware you're underscoring the intensity of a moment, whereas in a game you have to be careful not to give something away.

Oakenfold: Yeah. You just answered your question (laughs).

IGN: Is this music purely symphonic? Is it at all song-driven? How do you figure out how to create a cohesive body of music for something like this?

Oakenfold: Generally, it's not song driven, but there was one track that they wanted us to come up with a single, which we did with Gnarls Barkley. It's called "Falling," which is about the character.

IGN: But other than that all of the pieces are symphonic compositions?

Oakenfold: Yes.

IGN: When you were going through and working on this, did you have a lot of visual cues?

Oakenfold: Yes. They gave me drawings.

IGN: How does that guide or influence you?

Oakenfold: You get the tone and the feel, you get the idea of it. It's very important.

IGN: Is there an example you can give?

Oakenfold: They gave me an image of some of the characters in the game and you could see how dark they were, and for me I said straightaway that the tone and the feel should be dark. When I said that they were like, yeah we agree.

IGN: How if at all does this differ from the other music that you're making?

Oakenfold: It's completely different. When you're writing music for yourself, you're not being dictated by a visual, a film a game or whatever.